During presentations in class, I remember not only discussing the final designs, but also the ideas and concepts that lead us to them. Not unlike Conceptual Art, we emphasized the backing concepts.
con·cep·tu·al art
noun
• art in which the idea or concept presented by the artist is considered more important than its appearance or execution.
Conceptual thinking is the practice of connecting abstract, disparate ideas to deepen understanding, create new ideas and reflect on past decisions.1
What we wanted to know was, was there deeper thought behind the design?
And what was the design process? Like in UX Design.
One of the projects I did when I was a student, was a book cover redesign. A staple Graphic Design project. I chose to redesign the book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. I had read the book and thought there were a lot of ideas to draw from.
The story is told from the perspective of Christopher John Francis Boone, a 15-year-old mathematician on the autistic spectrum. One night he discovers his neighbor’s dog has been murdered and he decides to investigate.
Some things that stood out to me were:
To my surprise, Mark Haddon,
(13 + 1 + 18 + 11) + (8 + 1 + 4 + 4 + 15 + 14) = 89, is prime number!
“Like Jesus Christ (151), or Scooby-Doo (113), or Sherlock Holmes (163), or Doctor Watson (167).”
I decided to put my focus on prime numbers and explore what I could do with them.
In one of my explorations, I landed on plotting numbers in a matrix, identifying the prime numbers, and removing the rest. I was left with a lot of negative space, but I noticed it created even diagonal channels.
The channels created by the plotting the prime numbers in a matrix reminded me of an arial view of a neighborhood. This idea also seemed to tie in with the images presented throughout the book. Here's an example of a neighborhood map from the book.
"I was just noticing how things were, and that wasn’t clever. That was just being observant."
—Christopher John Francis Boone
Within the channels, I added the book title and the author's name. It started looking super Swiss, which wasn't intentional, but understandable, being based in maths and through the use of a sans-serif type.
But what I did like from this exploration was plotting Mark Haddon (89) on the chart using Boone's favorite color and creating the connection by also using red in his name.
I also like that the lonely red dot contrasted with the other dots, which relates to the differences Boone feels when trying to relate to others.
Though this design could use more iterations, I liked this exploration because I think the conceptual thinking behind the design was interesting. The process itself felt intentional, as design should be.
The most obvious step from Graphic Design towards UX Design is UI Design.
When working on a redesign concept for Vintage MC, a Mid-Century Modern focused retail and e-commerce store, one of the things that caught eye pretty early was their logo that was inspired by the Egg Chair.
Their logo is a chair and so by grounding it, it gave the logo more weight, and the concept as a whole looked more intentional.
It's easy to see how Graphic Design thinking or conceptual thinking can applied to visuals like branding within the UI, but this decision had nothing to with user experience, whether the chair was floating or grounded doesn't affect the user's experience actually using the website.
So…
UX Design is creative, but not necessarily in the way most people might think it is. Yes, the UI design is a part of it, but it's about crafting good experiences, and should be by way of research.
When working with The Healing, a non-profit with a focus on health and wellness for BIPOC men, to improve their user experience, the stakeholder we were working with wanted a dark-mode UI. I learned that sometimes there are business requirements we need to make work.
With dark-mode, being the only mode vs. giving users the option, it could be a jarring transition for users who don't use dark-mode regularly.
When asked why dark-mode?
The client said they wanted to reflect a calm, dimly lit room, like their yoga events.
There was an idea there in what he said.
Keeping the user's experience in mind, the idea was to ease the user into the dark-mode UI through the use of an animation. The concept played off the idea of entering a calm dark room, this transition led to a softer landing into the website for those users that don't use dark-mode regularly. By walking the user into a yoga space, it created a better experience for the user.
As Christopher John Francis Boone stated, it's about being observant. I think Conceptual Thinking or the ability to take a concept, often connecting abstract various ideas, and turning it into a new design has a place in UX. It's about being open to exploration and looking for those connections, especially when it helps craft better experiences.
Thank you for reading!
If you like what you see and want to work together, get in touch!
jkwak09@gmail.com
